Serpentine Gallery

Serpentine Gallery is one of London’s best-loved galleries for modern and contemporary art. Its Exhibition, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year and admission is free.

In the grounds of the Gallery is a permanent work by artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, dedicated to the Serpentine’s former Patron Diana, Princess of Wales. The work comprises eight benches, a tree-plaque, and a carved stone circle at the Gallery’s entrance.

The Serpentine is right at the heart of contemporary culture in London and is one of the country's most popular public galleries, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The Serpentine organises up to six exhibitions annually and is the only publicly funded gallery in London to consistently maintain free admission.

Collection details

Architecture, Decorative and Applied Art, Film and Media, Fine Art

Exhibition details are listed below, you may need to scroll down to see them all.

Exhibition (temporary)

Bertrand Lavier: Fountain 2014

14 October 2014 — 4 October 2015 *on now

Celebrated French artist Bertrand Lavier, renowned for his inspirational sculptures made from assembled and modified found objects, has been commissioned by the Serpentine to create a fountain within the grounds of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

Following Rock On Top of Another Rock by Fischli/Weiss the fountain is part of the Serpentine’s ongoing outdoor commissions in Kensington Gardens and will be in situ for one year.

Bertrand Lavier’s Fountain is a playful interpretation of this most traditional of garden features; instead of a classical sculpture of a figure or natural form, the jets of water emanate from an apparently unruly mass of garden hoses.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Where

Serpentine Sackler GalleryW Carriage Dr, London W2

Website

Duane Hanson

2 June — 13 September 2015 *on now

The Serpentine presents the work of late American sculptor Duane Hanson in his first survey show in London since 1997. Throughout his forty-year career, Hanson created lifelike sculptures portraying working-class Americans and overlooked members of society. Reminiscent of the Pop Art movement of the time, his sculptures transform the banalities and trivialities of everyday life into iconographic material. The exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery presents key works from the artist’s oeuvre.

Website

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk

2 June — 13 September 2015 *on now

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s (born 1977, London) oil paintings depict figures that appear to exist outside of a specific time and place. There are very few references to background, history, activity and place of the individuals and groups of figures in her paintings. This ambiguity, which also resonates in the enigmatic titles given to each work, invites the viewer to consider the subjects as suggestions rather than explicit narratives or specific portraits. At the heart of Yiadom-Boakye’s work is an exploration of the mechanics of painting where she reconstructs the meaning that contemporary painting could hold, in all its unexpected beauty and idiosyncratic details. Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery is a survey of recent work presenting a comprehensive range of painterly techniques, representing the artist’s key series of works. Throughout her work, Yiadom-Boakye has raised timeless questions of identity and representation in art, bringing awareness to such matters and the shortcomings of art history.

Website

Serpentine Pavilion 2015

25 June — 18 October 2015 *on now

Over the past 15 years the Serpentine Pavilion has become an international site for architectural experimentation, presenting inspirational temporary structures by some of the world's greatest architects. A much-anticipated landmark in London each summer, the Pavilion is one of the top-ten most visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world.

Spanish architects SelgasCano are designing the 15th Serpentine Pavilion. The award-winning studio, headed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano, is the first Spanish architecture practice to be asked to design the temporary Pavilion on the Serpentine’s lawn in London’s Kensington Gardens. In keeping with the criteria of the scheme, this will be the studio’s first new structure in the UK. The design render shows an amorphous, double-skinned, polygonal structure consisting of panels of a translucent, multi-coloured fabric membrane (ETFE) woven through and wrapped in webbing. Visitors will be able to enter and exit the Pavilion at a number of different points, passing through a ‘secret corridor’ between the outer and inner layer of the structure and into the Pavilion’s brilliant, stained glass-effect interior.

Teachers' Notes for Jeff Koons Exhibition

A free resource, designed to support your visit to the Serpentine Gallery. Teachers Notes include images, key themes, ideas to explore and suggestions for discussion and practical activities at the Gallery and in the classroom.

Website

E-mail

Information

Telephone

Information

020 7402 6075

Recorded information

020 7298 1515

Fax

020 7402 4103

All information is drawn from or provided by the venues themselves and every effort is made to ensure it is correct. Please remember to double check opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit.